My Faith as an adult

The fundamental questions, those which regard the meaning of life, merit more attentive reflection. It would be foolish to neglect them because of superficiality or indifference.

The absence of questioning and searching is more dangerous than giving erroneous answers. Today we willingly wallow in indifference without asking ourselves about the meaning of life.

Today there is no doubt that people are thirsting, thirsting for God.

A woman from Samaria goes to the well to draw water and encounters Jesus of Nazareth. When Jesus started the conversation, she responds with repeated irony and apparent self-assuredness.

Jesus tries to get her to have a different type of thirst, one that is hidden in the depth of her heart. For this reason, another type of water is required. He places her before the disorder in her own life, so as to become conscious of it.

The woman is struck. Nevertheless, she attempts to be evasive and direct the conversation elsewhere.

In the end Jesus points out to her a new relationship with God, "in spirit and in truth" (Jn 4:24). He reveals Himself to her as the awaited Messiah, the only one capable of giving water which quenches thirst forever. The woman then leaves her jug at the well and runs with enthusiasm to call her townsmen: "Come and see" (Jn 4:29). She reports having found that which perhaps, without knowing it, she had always been looking for.

The Samaritan woman represents us.

Everyone experiences thirst and wanders from one well to another. This is a tireless roaming about, an inextinguishable desire for a multiplicity of material and spiritual goods.

In our days this searching seems in actuality to have become a tumultuous rush: producing and consuming, possessing many things and creating many experiences, always looking for new sensations, of everything and in a hurry.

Many, though, have the impression that they are running aimlessly, accumulating things which turn out to be empty. Many lament an impoverishment in human relations which are anonymity, extraneousness, superficial and exploitable encounters, margination of the weakest, conflicts and delinquency. All this contrasts with that which seems to be our most profound desire: to love and be loved.

The biblical text is extremely real. It uncovers the logic of a materialistic mentality: "Brief and troublous is our lifetime ... For haphazard were we born, and hereafter we shall be as though we had not been ... For our lifetime is the passing of a shadow ... Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are real, and use the freshness of creation avidly. Let us have our fill of costly wine and perfumes, and let no springtime blossom pass us by ... Let us oppress the needy just man; let us neither spare the widow nor revere the old man for his hair grown while with time. But let our strength be our norm of justice; for weakness proves itself useless" (Wis 2: 1, 2, 5, 6-8, 10-12).

An emotion of emptiness, a craving for pleasure, an overbearing sentiment: coherent logic, but a sad one.

We possess an acute consciousness of our liberty.

But is not this liberty perhaps sterile, if it does not pursue the objective worth of the human person.

Is it not reducible to a vane restlessness before dying.

In order to be truly free, do we not have to search perhaps for truth and what is good?

Nowadays we hold the sciences in high esteem. They research and procure an increasing dominion over natural and social phenomena. But are such sciences capable of indicating the goals for which we ought to strive with the power we now have at our disposal? Is it reasonable to pay attention only to that which we can see and touch, calculate and control experimentally? Are we not leaving out in this way the central nucleus of our own person and that of others: trust, love, beauty, goodness, joyfulness, all that which renders our life more worthy of being lived?

We need to be freed from prejudices and conformity. We need to be sincere and honest with ourselves. It is necessary to take these important questions seriously, which we all carry inside of us. Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? And even more: is reality absurd or intelligible? Is life a gift, blind destiny or a product of chance? Why do we have this thirst that no conquest can extinguish? What am I able to hope for and what ought I to do? If I come from nothing and go to nothing, it would seem that there is nothing to hope for and nothing to do, but just allow myself to drift off. If instead I come from a Love which is infinite and I am advancing towards infinite Love, then another path opens up before my feet, difficult perhaps, but completely meaningful.

"Order in thought consists in beginning with my own self, under my own authorship, from my own end" (B. Pascal, Thoughts, 146).

He who avoids the fundamental questions, is running away from himself. He who says: "There is nothing after death", knows that he does not have any proof and perhaps is suffering from a secret anguish. Indifference, hedonism and activism are not a solution, but an irresponsible evasion.

"Let the one who thirsts come forward, and the one who wants it receive the gift of life-giving water" (Rv 22:17).